This article is an updated
and revised version of the article on Yehuda Pen
originally posted in September 2002.

We
thank Vitaly Charny for his continuing
series of articles about the Jews of Belarus and
for his permission to publish this article here.

Reprinting or copying of is
not allowed
without prior permission from the
copyrightholders.

Yehuda M. Pen and his Disciples

of the Vitebsk Art School

by Vitaly Charny

Abram Brazer (1892-1942),
Portrait of Yehuda Pen

"I learned about Pen when I
was riding on a streetcar. It was crossing the
Cathedral Square and I saw a banner - white letters
on blue: Artist Pen's School. 'What a cultured city
is our Vitebsk,' I thought."

MARC CHAGALL,
"MY LIFE"

Let's start the story with the name of
the Jewish artist that would first come to mind for
people around the world with minimum knowledge of Art
History - Marc Chagall. It is hard to tell what would
have happened to Chagall, had he not one day come across
the banner reading "Artist Pen's School of Drawing
and Painting."

Congratulating Pen on his career
anniversary in autumn 1921, Chagall wrote: "I
recall how, as a boy, I climbed the steps of your studio.
And the tremor with which I awaited you: you were to
decide my fate in my mother's presence. I know how many
other young boys in Vitebsk and the entire gubernia had
their fates decided by you. For dozens of years your
studio was the first to lure people in town... You have
trained a vast generation of Jewish artists."

Solomon Yudovin (1892-1954),St. Anthony Cathedral

Today Pen is known almost exclusively as
the first teacher of his distinguished disciples,
including such as Ossip Zadkine (see below), Lazar
Lissitzky, Oscar Meshchaninov, Abel Pan (Pfeffennan),
Solomon Yudovin (see above) and, primarily, Marc Chagall
- the few artists, that is, whose life stories were
successful. The works of Pen, as well as those of the
"vast generation of Jewish artists" he trained,
remain virtually unknown even to experts. Pen's artistic
heritage is rather fragmentary - the 200 works of his
which have survived are kept, for the most part, in
Vitebsk and Minsk museums, and represent but a fraction
of what was left by the artist.

Many of his students perished in the
Holocaust, in battles of WWII and in the Gulag. Most of
their works must have been lost irretrievably during that
period. The few surviving pieces are gathering dust and
decaying in remote storerooms of provincial museums. The
early works of the Vitebsk period of Pen and Zadkine, to
name but a few, are still out of reach and therefore
unstudied.

The history of the Vitebsk School, its
peculiarities and poetics, can hardly be understood
without passing judgment on the personality of its
founder, Yehuda Pen, as a certain historical-cultural
phenomenon. He represented a stereotypical characteristic
of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia of the late 19th
century.

Gogol Street in Vitebsk in the
early 20th century. In the white house on the right was
Pen's school and apartment

Pen's life story was in many ways typical
of nearly all Jewish artists of his generation in Russia.
He was born into a big and poor family in the small
township of Novo-Alexandrovsk (now Zarasai, Lithuania) on
May 24 (June 5 by the Gregorian calendar),1854. He was
only four years old when his father died. Soon his mother
sent him to a cheder, where the little boy displayed a
gift for drawing. He avidly devoted himself to it,
drawing letters in books, coloring Purim rattles, making
mizrachim and taking an order for the ornamental
decoration of the cover page of the Pinkos for the local
Jewish community. The young artist also drew portraits of
local people, generals and mounted Cossacks, giving
preference to that type of "art". His passion
for drawing met with no approval or support from the
family; and his mother, despairing of her son's ever
doing well, left him to his own devices. Meanwhile, a
distant relation of theirs, who had a small business
making signboards and painting parquet floors in the town
of Dvinsk (Daugavpils, Latvia) not far from Novo-Alexandrovsk,
heard about the gifted child. In late 1867, Yehuda Pen
left for Dvinsk, where become an apprentice to a
housepainter, yet had the good fortune to be able to
pursue his passion for art. He gained some experience,
and his master soon began entrusting him with the more
important and demanding orders.

In Dvinsk, Pen also acquainted himself
with the Pumpiansky family, whose house was a center of
cultural life in the town. On one occasion in that
hospitable place, Pen met Boruch Girshovich, a student on
vacation from St.Petersburg's Academy of Arts, who spoke
favorably of Pen's work and assured Pen that he was
capable of entering the Academy of Arts. A little over
twenty at the time, Pen was devout, wore traditional
Jewish clothes and spoke next to no Russian. Nevertheless
he dreamed of becoming a professionally trained artist,
and the prohibition to write and draw on Saturdays was
the only thing that interfered with his dreams. All
doubts were finally cast away when he received a letter
from Girshovich in the summer of 1879; and he left for St.Petersburg
to take entrance examinations for the Academy of Arts.

Yehuda Pen (1854-1937);
Portrait of Marc Chagall, 1907

Initially, he was not successful. He
failed the entrance exams, but decided to stay in the
capital and try again. He made that decision despite the
fact that as a Jew, devoid of the "right of
residence," he could live in St.Petersburg only
illegally, constantly paying a "tribute" to
yard-keepers lest they should inform the police. However,
for twelve months he could visit the Hermitage Museum and
the Academy copy room, polishing his drawing skills and
preparing for the exam. Girshovich and Asknasii, already
fairly well known at that time, offered their help and in
1880 Pen became an Academy student. Among fellow-freshmen
that year were Maimon and Mane, as well as Mordecai Ioffe
(b. 1864, last record dated 1924), who had taken drawing
lessons from Pen in Dvinsk.

There were several Jews among the Academy
of Arts students in the early 1880's. Some of them, e.g.
Ilya Ginzburg (1859-1939), Moses Maimon and Maria Dillon
(1858-1932), were to gain celebrity in their time. The
authorities of Russian higher educational establishments
were, as a rule, suspicious of Jewish students, and anti-Semitism
was fairly widespread among students themselves. That
made Jewish students stick together and keep to
themselves. They all knew each other. Pen soon became
acquainted with other Jewish students at the Academy and
became privy to the problems assailing young Jewish
artists at that period.

At that time, there were factors that
could not but shatter their serenely idyllic estheticism.
Under Tsar Alexander III, Russian reality itself, with
its waves of pogroms, tougher anti-Jewish legislation and
growing everyday anti-Semitism, made the Jewish
intelligentsia think critically of its former attitude
toward and ideas of their national and cultural
development.

P.P.Chistyakov (1832 -1919), who taught
Pen, is known not only as a remarkable Russian artist but
also as a talented educator. For twenty years, from 1872
to 1892, he was an assistant professor of painting at the
Academy of Arts, and schooled Ilya Repin, Isaac Asknasii,
Mikhail Vrubel, Valenlin Serov and Vasily Surikov, all of
whom always spoke of their instructor with love and
respect. His educational system went far beyond the
framework of academic doctrine and must be considered
innovative for his time. Though he sternly insisted on
his students perfecting their technical mastery, as a
true educator Chistyakov saw his main task as providing
conditions favorable for the development of creative
individuality, and encouraged any, even the most modest
talent. An atmosphere of friendliness and creativity
reigned supreme in his studio, a favorable contrast to
many things characteristic of the Academy.

Pen graduated from the landscape painting
class in 1885 with another Silver Medal. In October 1885
he took an exam presenting his summer works, and was soon
given the diploma of an extra class artist. He attended
the Academy for another year, completing the scholarly
course in 1886. He returned to Novo-Alexandrovsk, then
moved to Dvinsk in search of work and finally to Riga.
There he met Baron N. N. Korf, who invited the artist to
work on his estate outside of Kreizburg, a township
halfway between Vitebsk and Dvinsk. Pen recalled that the
local Jews had received his arrival at the estate with
great enthusiasm, as they were convinced that he was
Baron Girsch of Austria who had come to buy them out and
send them to Argentina.

It can be surmised that Pen came to
Kreizburg in 1891 and stayed there for five years. Though
he personally considered those years as lost because he
drew mostly portraits from photographs, it was still an
important period in the artist's life. In the year of
Pen's arrival at the Baron's estate, Ilya Repin, a
leading figure of Russian realistic art at the turn of
the century, bought the Zdravnevo estate outside Vitebsk.
He moved there with his family in May 1892 and lived
there, except during the winters, until 1896.

Repin (see below) had met Pen at the
Academy of Arts and had spoken favorably of his younger
colleague's works. Pen visited Zdravnevo on many
occasions and received visits from Repin in turn. The
landscape artist Yuri Klever (1850-1924), who was renown
at that time and also a graduate of the St. Petersburg
Academy, lived in neighboring Vitebsk. Zdravnevo, where
many artists came, including those from Vitebsk to visit
Repin, was make new friends among his contemporaries.
Thus, living in Kreizburg, he was in no way secluded from
news of artistic life nor deprived of "professional"
contacts. On the contrary, Pen could establish business
contacts in Vitebsk in those years and find patrons among
the local Jewish bourgeoisie.

Ilya Repin mansion in
Zdravnevo, and his picture "A
Belorussian Man"

Pen's Vitebsk friends and benefactors
urged him to come to Vitebsk, promising their help in
opening a private drawing school, a long time dream of
his. They made efforts to obtain permission from the
governor and central authorities. The chance to open a
school that could guarantee him a stable income and
normal working conditions proved for Pen a decisive
argument in favor of moving to Vitebsk. In the late 19th
century, Vitebsk was a major town in Northwestern Russia
and the center of a vast economically developed gubernia.
It had regular railway communications with Vilno, Riga,
Kovno, Mogilev and St.Petersburg. Like other provincial
centers of Russia at the turn of the century, Vitebsk
boasted a vigorous cultural life, hardly inferior to that
of the capital. Theater companies regularly came on tours
and famous musicians gave concerts there.

Vitebsk even had its own symphony
orchestra that performed in Vilno and Riga, as well as at
home. The Vitebsk professionals were mostly Jewish. In
short, Pen found Vitebsk to be a major cultural center
where he was eagerly awaited. He was offered a flat in
one of the central streets, where he organized a studio
in one of the rooms and opened his School of Drawing and
Painting in November 1897. It seems that his School was
the first, and for some time, the only Jewish art school.
Pen was hardly pursuing any special program of national
artistic training. In the late 19th century, little
thought was given to the need for such a program. On
September 17, 1896, the Vitebskie Gubernskie Novosti (Vitebsk
Gubernia News) carried Pen's advertisement that his
School offered a course in drawing geometric figures,
ornaments, plaster statues and nature and open-air
paintings.

Yehuda Pen, "Vitebsk
Street"

Pen's School was admittedly Jewish for
natural reasons: in the late 19th century, Jews accounted
for over 52 percent of the town's population, and the
overwhelming majority of Pen's students were Jewish. Many
of them spoke no Russian and attended yeshivas, Jewish
religious schools. Pen personally observed Judaic
commandments and went to the synagogue. No classes were
held at his School on Saturdays.

Throughout his life Pen considered
himself a "Jewish artist", and that was how
those around him saw him. He passed that self-identification
onto many of his students, and the idea was perhaps most
aptly expressed by Marc Chagall, who said: "Had I
not been a Jew (the way I see it), I would not have been
an artist, or else I would have been an entirely
different artist."

Marc Chagall (1887-1985),
"Over The Town"

Pen took a serious attitude toward the
Jewish way of life he portrayed. Indeed, the literal,
almost "ethnographic" documentary
characteristic of those painters can be traced in Pen's
better known pictures: Divorce 1907; Old
Woman with a Book (Taitch Humesh), the 1900's; Sabbath
Meal, the 1920's, and other works. And still, there
is only superficial similarity: in his best works Pen
went far beyond documenting trivial scenes of Jewish life
to tackle much more monumental tasks. In general, few of
his works can be termed as purely genre paintings.

The everyday reality of life is given
symbolic dimension, so that the Jewish way of life and
its attributes are transformed in Pen's paintings into a
means of expressing the spiritual essence of the Jewish
people, seen by the artist as something constant.

Pen had special interest in old European
paintings and a love for Rembrandt. It was not by chance
that at the first art exhibition in Vitebsk in 1899 Pen
displayed, among his other works, a painstakingly
executed copy of Rembrandt's Menashe ben Israel (see
below).

However, what mattered the most to Pen
was the fact that Rembrandt was not merely a great master
who could teach him the secrets of art, but first and
foremost, an artist who painted Jews. This fact is of
paramount importance because it served for Pen as meaning
in his creative quests and desire to express the national
tradition. European genre painting never overshadowed
Pen's principal goal - he depicted the Jewish mode of
life, his characters read Jewish books and papers, and he
looked for and found Rembrandtesque types in the local
ethnographic environment.

An analysis of the characteristic
features of the Vitebsk School as a whole shows that
Pen's portraits form, if not an integral iconographic
system, then at least a type of iconography that was
reproduced by his disciples and associates, such as
Chagall, Axelrod, Yakerson, Yudovin and even Brazer.
Though the latter never formally studied under Pen, he
worked with him in Vitebsk and indisputably came under
his influence.

Pen was fond of painting the town and its
environs and nurtured that love in his students. He used
to say, "You see. I love the portrait-like nature of
towns. Every town should have its own portraits, and our
Vitebsk here has its own images that distinguish it from
all other towns. Take a walk through the environs of
Vitebsk. Let's take, for instance, Markovshchina. It is a
wonderful place where one can have one's fill of fresh
air and cleanse one's blood enough to make a jolly
landscape the next day. That air, I tell you, will itself
settle down on your canvas."

Pen worked in the open air with his
students, and many of them, even when they were mature
artists (Chagall in particular), willingly accompanied
their teacher to draw landscapes. That is why their
landscapes show the same sights of Vitebsk, painted from
the places to which Pen had brought them, and their
townscapes were often arranged in keeping with the
principles characteristic of Pen's landscape painting.

Marc Chagall, "Walk"

Pen's private school existed until Marc
Chagall opened the Public Higher School of Art in 1918.
He invited his first teacher to head one of the studios
in it. After the Higher School became an institute, Pen,
in addition to teaching, served as vice-rector. Students,
many of whom often came to his classes, invariably
treated Pen with love and respect. Unable to accept
methods of art education and practices introduced by the
new School authorities after Chagall's departure, Pen was
forced to leave that educational establishment together
with Brazer, Minin and Yudovin, in 1923, and retired on
pension. That fact, however, had little effect on his
authority and popularity. In 1927, his thirtieth
anniversary of work in Vitebsk was officially celebrated
in the town and his home continued to attract young
artist and art lovers. People came to his place to see
the pictures that completely covered the walls (Pen
painted till his last days), to seek advice and to visit
the most respected and kindhearted Friend.

Because of Pen's school's fame and
success of his pupils, Vitebsk attracted many great
artists in the early 1900s who come to work in the town
and teach at the school. Among them were Kazimir
Malevich, Robert Falk, El (Lazar) Lisitsky, Mstislav
Dobuzhinsky, Ivan Puni, David Yakerson and many others.

In the early hours of March 2, 1937,
Yehuda Pen was murdered in his home. The motives of that
wanton murder have remained obscure to this day, however
it coincided with the tide of Stalin terror that swamped
the country during those years. But the history of the
Vitebsk School did not end with Pen's death. His
disciples, no matter how they might have distanced
themselves from the artistic views of their first
teacher, sooner or later reverted to them and returned to
Vitebsk, the town of their youth, which in their minds
epitomized a harmoniously integral world.

Marc Chagall, "Time
Has Only One Wing"

Chagall might have foreseen all that when
he wrote to Pen: "We, score of your first students,
will have a special memory of you. We are not blind. No
matter what extremity may hurl us in a direction far away
from you in the field of art, your image of an honest
master-artist and the first teacher is still great. I
love you for that."